


Splash

by Rozarka



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-22
Updated: 2007-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-11 04:55:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/474754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rozarka/pseuds/Rozarka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Viktor corners Hermione in the bathtub for a talk about experience, lack of the same, and the purple sex toy that just fell into her bath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Splash

"Hey ... Viktor? Wait a second!"

He didn't recognize the voice calling at once, and turned with a wary gaze, his hand still poised on the wrought-iron gate into Hermione's small front garden. He was half expecting to see a group of his fans standing behind him begging autographs, or worse, a journalist looking for a scoop on his private life.

Instead, hurrying to catch up with him was a young woman with forthright warm eyes and red hair, straight as a molten-gold waterfall in the slanting rays of the evening sun. Ginny Weasley and Harry lived just up this London street from Hermione, so he had met them quite a few times since he and Hermione started seeing each other after the war. He'd drop by for an evening or a weekend with her whenever the Quidditch circuit permitted it, and sometimes all four of them would go to a pub or a cinema, usually meeting one or more of Ginny's brothers there.

"Nice to see you, Ginny." He gave a courteous nod and smiled at her, despite being a tad disappointed that his surprise visit to Hermione would happen in shared company. That was a risk calculated into the surprise element, he guessed. "You haff come to visit Her-my-nee, too?"

"I just spoke with her on the tellyfone, and said I'd drop by with some stuff we'd ordered that came by owl today." She raised the parcel she was holding under her arm. "In fact--" She shrugged and gave him a speculative look. "Why don't you give her this for me? Now that you're here, you two will want to be together, and I'll just be in the way."

She grinned, and Viktor smiled back, uncertain how to reply to this assumption. He and Hermione were good friends, but little more than that ... yet. Dancing around something more, yes, and both enjoying the dance as far as he could tell, but cuddling in front of Hermione's telly at nights, hand-holding when they went for walks, and gentle goodbye kisses didn't amount to the sort of togetherness that Ginny's knowing eyes hinted at.

If anything he felt that Hermione was holding back against his advances, more apprehensive than he'd initially expected her to be -- less bold, in fact, than when she'd been a fifteen-year-old girl getting her first taste of sensuality and romance. It was the after-effects of the war, he was pretty sure, and so he didn't find it so hard to be patient -- the fight had taken so much focus and passion out of her and it was as though she needed this slow pace to catch up with her own feelings, get ready to give in full measure again. And she might be brave and assertive, but Hermione was also a girl of nineteen whose sexual past, as far as he'd been able to gather, was limited to their gentle embraces four years ago and a few weeks at the end of the war with Ron Weasley.

"I not mind if you join us, but I vill take this if you like," he said merely, accepting the package as Ginny placed it in his hands. 

"Just go right in," said Ginny. "She said she'd be lying down for a rest and would leave the door unlocked for me."

"Vell ... okay, if you think so. Good-bye," said Viktor as Ginny turned back the way she'd come from and gave him a jaunty little wave.

He strode up the gravel path, opening the door. Strains of piano music reached him, something tranquil yet intricate that he recognized vaguely.

"Just come in," called Hermione. She sounded drowsy, heavy, and he looked inside the living-room, knowing she sometimes napped on the sofa there in the evening.

She wasn't there. He glanced around, wondering if she were in the bedroom. He'd rather not assume too much and walk uninvited in there. 

"I'm in the bath," Hermione called out, and Viktor turned quickly around to face the bathroom door, stiffening as he heard a lazy splash of water.

Stiffening in several capacities, actually. It must surely be one of the most instantaneous erections he'd had in his life. It wasn't like she hadn't used the shower when he stayed over, but there was something sweetly decadent in this ... Hermione, in the bath, and she didn't know he was here. She would be naked in the bath ... naked, and ... and foamy, and _wet_. And naked.

"Just put it on the dresser and make yourself a cuppa ... Ginny? Is that you?" Hermione made a bigger splash of water, starting to sound anxious as there was no reply, and Viktor knew he'd have to reveal himself or scare her. But his voice was altogether gone. He cleared his throat, and heard Hermione give a gasp at the deep, un-Ginny-like sound.

Viktor didn't deny the temptation involved in his decision to calm her, as he strode resolutely to the bathroom door and opened it a notch. She was sitting upright in the bathtub, her wand ready in her hand, her hair pinned at the top of her head and falling in crazy curls in the damp heat, the tops of her breasts pale and shiny above the mounds of flower-scented foam.

"Is me," said Viktor in hoarse, superfluous introduction, and Hermione stared at him somewhere between relief and reproach, happy surprise and embarrassment, and reached to put the wand back on the window sill.

"Viktor! I didn't know you'd be coming tonight ... and why didn't you use the doorbell?" she blurted out.

"You _said_ just come in," said Viktor in his defence. He held the package up. "Met Ginny Veasley outside; she told me to give you this."

Hermione's face went from flushed to white as she stared at the package as though it were a writhing snake. Then the colour flooded back in her face again, a more vivid shade than before.

"P-please put that away," she stammered. "Ah, um, just put it on the shelf over there. Please?"

Alarmed by her reaction, Viktor gave the package a closer look as he entered the bathroom. It had been opened, by Ginny, obviously, to retrieve her part of the mail order; the address written on it was hers. It was a quite narrow shape, rectangular, and not very heavy. Wrapped in plain brown paper, just about the length of a wand or ...

Oh. _Oh?_

Viktor stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the package, then back at Hermione in surprise as she made a ferocious lunge from the bath -- water, foam and _breasts_ , Viktor's stunned mind registered -- clutching the parcel which fell open as she grasped at it, something long and bright purple rolling out of the paper, into the water and disappearing under the foam like sunken treasure. 

Following so immediately that the events seemed parallel, there was an even larger splash of water as Hermione rocketed up with a gasping yelp, scrambling out of the bath in unmistakeable terror. She almost skidded on the glazed tiles and clutched her wet fingers around his arms, nearly hyperventilating where she stood.

Viktor stared at her agape and then glanced quickly away, his face on fire. He had no earthly idea what had just taken place before his eyes.

"Ohhh," she whimpered, then groaned. "Viktor, I'm so sorry, I'm an idiot, I--"

All right, so he didn't know what had just happened, but he could recognize hysteria when he heard it, and it was so unlike Hermione that alarm spurred him to action. He turned towards her again, taking the utmost care not to let his gaze wander any lower than her jawline, and firmly grasped around her shoulders. "Her-my-nee. Easy. Vot happened? No, no, don't be afraid--" He bent at his knees to be on eye level with her. "Please tell me--"

"It was just Muggle-think," she babbled. He could see her pulse hammering at her throat. "I was afraid of, of electric shock, except of course there wouldn't be any batteries in it yet, and it wouldn't be switched on at any rate, and anyway it's _not_ a bloody Muggle object is it, it is a wizarding ... wizarding ... gadget, but when it fell in, I, I just thought electrocution and I panicked, and--" She swallowed, stared aghast into the depths of the bathtub. "At least I, I _think_ it's safe in water, but I--"

"Shh." He patted her shoulders awkwardly and ran a hand back through his hair in bewilderment. All right, it was a toy. A sex toy, a wizarding sex toy, and there was no reason he could think of why it would be dangerous to submerge it in water. "Take it easy, Her-my-nee. I vill take it out of the vater for you, all right?" He sighed and shook his head when she whimpered again. "You don't haff to look. Please, don't be--" Don't be ashamed, he wanted to say, but the fact was that it was all too easy to understand her embarrassment as he was rather firmly in the clutches of the same emotion.

He quickly crouched down by the bath, pushing his jacket and sweater sleeves up to his biceps as he dipped his hand in the water and searched. Thankfully, he found the toy at once and fished it out of the water, then stood up and placed it on the shelf, before turning to her again. There was no way he could avoid getting an eyeful now, and a very pleasing one it was too -- such lovely lines, full and slender by turn, and a nest of soft wet curls between her legs, a little darker than her hair. Viktor felt a whimper of his own threaten to emerge and cleared his voice hastily.

She was staring transfixed from the bath to something behind him -- the towel hanging on the rack, he realized with a quick glance over his shoulder -- evidently trying to figure out what option would more quickly offer her concealment. However, she remained immobile, her expression helpless. For once, Hermione's mind seemed to fail her utterly.

Viktor was on some level aware that they'd have to talk about this or be unable to meet each other's gaze again for weeks, and that it would be easier to make Hermione stay put for such a conversation if he had her caught in a bathtub rather than in a towel. He reached out and placed a hand under her elbow, firmly shepherding her towards the edge of the bath. Hermione looked abjectly relieved to have had the matter taken out of her hands, and climbed into the bath, where she sat down and slowly submerged herself in the water as though she were contemplating drowning.

"Pleasecanweforgetthiseverhappened?" she asked faintly. She still looked so mortified it bordered on panic, and at the same time she was ablush and bare and riveting as a water nymph. The combination rendered Viktor absolutely helpless to do anything constructive.

"I, um," he muttered. He raked his fingers through his hair again, feeling it standing on end. "I ... Her-my-nee?" He took an uncertain step closer as her nose sunk close to the foam. "Ven breathing vater, people drown," he warned her gently.

He stared down at the empty, water-sodden wrapping paper on the floor, trying to sort out his own thoughts. Why would Hermione order this thing? All right, he wasn't that naive nor prudish; he knew it was nothing out of the normal, but if she was ... well, horny enough to order a sex toy, then why had they made only glacial-pace progress on the making-out front? She must know that she had only to ask -- God, to _look_ at him a certain way and he'd be ready and willing to supply the necessary ... equipment. 

He looked at her again and his usual resolve came flowing back. He would get to the bottom of this. He picked up the paper and placed it on the bathroom shelf, then shrugged off his jacket and pulled his sweater over his head, facing her in his jeans and T-shirt.

"V-Viktor? What on earth are you doing?"

"Is hot in here," explained Viktor. "Too steamy for many clothes. But ve must talk."

"Oh no, _please_ ," said Hermione in a half-groan. "Viktor, no offence, but this is really none of your business, and I don't want to talk about it! I know how it must look, but it isn't the way you think, all right?"

"Her-my-nee, you not know vot I think," objected Viktor in what he hoped was a soothing voice. He crouched down next to the bath, leaned his bare arms on the rim and rested his chin on top of his arms. Frowning, he pondered how to discuss this without provoking her into full defensive mode.

"So, you haff bought ... a special vand," he said, hoping some judiciously applied euphemism would smooth the way.

She gave a quick, choked laugh. "A ... what?" she whispered in disbelief.

"A vand, to help vith ... needs you haff."

"I ..." Hermione swallowed. She had foam on the tip of her nose, and he wanted to kiss it away. "Um, well. I suppose you could put it that way."

"I haff only two things I vould like to say. One of them is a question, which of course you not haff to answer, but I think it vould help if you can. Is this all right?"

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, before opening them with a resigned look. "It should be obvious that I'm not going anywhere."

"Good." He shot her an encouraging little smile. "The first thing is, you are absolutely right, is none of my business if you vant to use the special vand. In fact, believe it or not, to me the thought of you using it is..." Viktor blushed and gesticulated extremely vaguely in the general direction of his nether regions. "Is _very_ okay vith me. Okay?"

Hermione was approximately the colour of a ripe tomato, but nodded her understanding.

"Second thing is ... Is there any special reason you not vant to also help your needs vith ... _my_ vand?" asked Viktor gently. He chanced a teasing smile. "I know you haff not tried it yet, but it is properly vorking and vould be very glad to assist, I assure you."

"I ... um. Oh, drat," she whispered, shutting her eyes tight again. "Give me a moment to get my thoughts together here."

His heart clenched in sympathy for her, stronger than his own anxiety for her reply. His awareness of the gap of experience between them in this particular area was keen and conflicted; the fear of pushing her too far, too fast in constant tension with his desire to be the one to show her. He raised a hand to flick the foam off her nose with a fingertip. "You look like mermaid. Mer-my-nee," he teased her, and breathed out in relief when she gave a gasping little laugh and opened her eyes in surprise, her expression relaxing a fraction at last.

"Mer-my-nee? I like that." She chewed on her lower lip. "All right," she burst out, "I want to explain, but if you laugh at me, I swear I'll really drown myself in this bath, and you'll have my death on your hands!"

"You think I vill mock you for thing you find difficult? You know me better," he said quietly.

She nodded, going paler with nervousness. "You ... You know I was with Ron for a while. We ... Well, we had sex. We were the first for each other, and it was a bit, you know, awkward to figure out everything, and a bit painful at first, for me, but it was nice too. Really nice, Viktor!"

She looked so miserable that Viktor couldn't even find it in himself to be jealous of Weasley. He sensed that there was a big, jarring ' _but_ ' coming. "That's good," he murmured, and he meant it too. "Am glad first time vas vith someone who cared much about you."

Hermione took a deep breath. "Yes. Yes, I felt safe with Ron, appreciated and ... desirable, I guess. It's just ...you know, I really loved much of it? The kissing, and the ... touching, everywhere, and how we made each other feel. God, all of that was amazing. But then, even after the first few times, when it had stopped being painful, I still couldn't seem to get the hang of the ... the in-and-out thing. I mean, the ... the thrusting." She groaned, and sunk closer to the foam again. "Why do all the polite words to talk about sex sound idiotic when you say them aloud?"

Viktor couldn't help smiling, as he considered this. "There are other vords, that are not so polite perhaps but honest and useful. I not mind those vords but maybe you think they are bad to use?"

"You mean..." Hermione pressed her lips together for a moment; it looked like she was summoning courage. "Right," she said fretfully. "I loved the foreplay but the actual fucking was a big bloody bore! Oh, my God!" Round-eyed, she put her hand to her mouth for a second, then burst out giggling. "That felt liberating."

"I can imagine," said Viktor wryly. Her admission had come with considerable feeling. And it had been enlightening, too. 

She looked guilty in the next instant. "Please don't think badly about Ron. He took real care with it ... I mean, making sure I was ready, and all that. I think we were both confused because we were doing the things we were supposed to and it didn't work out the way we'd heard it should. And ... this wasn't why it ended, so you know, it was just one of many things where we weren't so great together."

Viktor sighed, and sat down on his knees on the bathroom floor to ease out of the tense, stiff position. The floor was puddled with water but he was already liberally splashed, so it didn't much matter that his jeans legs soaked through within seconds. "In fact, I haff much sympathy for Ron. For a boy, ven you start out, vomen's bodies are ... beautifully, horribly complicated. This may come as terrible shock, but first times I had sex, I vos not God's gift to vomen," he admitted, with a rueful shrug as he thought back. Hermione's raised eyebrows made him laugh. "You haff no idea. Learning sex as young Quidditch star vos not ideal. Some girls vould fake orgasms to please me, and not complain vith a vord, no matter how clueless I vas. Some vere so vorked up from fantasies about me that I needed hardly to lay a hand on them before they came, vith scream of 'Krum, Krum!' as though it vos a bloody Quidditch game..." He smiled when Hermione burst out laughing. "That vas flattering, but confusing, you know? Promise me you vill alvays call me Viktor ven ve make love."

"I solemnly swear," she said with a shy, shining smile above the foam and no quibbles with his bold assumption, which he found quite heartening. She took a deep breath as she sat up straighter. "It's funny isn't it? Sex is supposed to be so easy ... instinctual. I felt a total failure for not being able to get into it. I wondered if I liked women better, even, but..."

He was glad indeed that there was a but. "But?"

"But ... well, I just don't. It's men I think of that way, and the thought of having a ... a man ... well, having you inside me--" she was blushing crimson again. "It's very ... arousing."

Viktor swallowed hard. "Very ... arousing?" he parroted.

"It ... it makes me ... wet," she explained shyly, as though her first statement needed elaboration, which it definitely did not, since Viktor was already worrying whether he'd be able to get out of his kneeling position without bursting the front seam of his jeans. "So that's why I ordered the ... the thing. Because I thought if I could only experiment and get used to the sensations, I'd be able to apply the theory of me liking it and make it work in practice." She gnawed on her lip, looking a bit anxious, yet determined. "I really think I can, Viktor, if you'll only be patient a little while longer."

Oh, God. She was going to kill him. The situation was getting to him in the worst way: the frank conversation, her flushed, wet nakedness -- and Merlin, now the imagined visual of her _using_ that thing he had fished out of the bath. The foam had started to dissipate in places, and he could glimpse her nipples just below the surface, like shadows of rose petals floating there, and tightened his grip on the rim of the bathtub to keep his fingers from straying.

"Her-my-nee, if it feels more safe for you to first use--" he nodded towards the toy on the shelf "--that, to learn vot you like ... I understand, but you haff nothing to prove to me. I vill love to spend time find the vays that please you." He leaned forwards and slanted a light kiss across her lips before she could reply. "Vill be very good between us, I think, ven you are ready to try." He stood up, knees popping, biting his lip against a wince as his jeans pressed against the unabated hardness in front. "I should leave you to finish bath now."

He was turning, ready to leave the room, when he felt a slender, wet hand clasp around his wrist and tug him back. Meeting her gaze he saw her chewing on her lip again, then breathing fast as though she were poising herself for a dive. "Would you like to keep me company when I practice?"

The words had come blurting out, and it took Viktor a few seconds to ascertain to himself that he had really heard what he'd first thought.

He drew a shocked, hard breath. "You ... vant me ... to vatch?" he asked, his voice almost pained.

Her expression fell and her gaze too as she let go of his wrist and concentrated fully on building some abstract structure of foam in front of her. "Oh, God, I don't know what I was thinking, you must think I'm a total sl--"

"That vos a _yes_ ," Viktor interrupted her rather forcefully, wiping his sweaty palms on his thighs, and then added more gently, as her head whipped back up to look at him: "And please not use that vord. I never vould think that."

"Really?" She looked at once immensely relieved and nervous. "You want to? I mean ... you've more experience, obviously, it would be ... practical, having you around." She swallowed. "To do more than watch, even, maybe, if you feel like--"

"Her-my-nee." He leaned down over her, and stopped her with a long, passionate kiss. She was flushed when he pulled back, and he ran his fingers over her cheek. "You must stop saying sexy vords now or you vill put me in very embarrassing situation," he told her, and she glanced, instinctively, down at his crotch and widened her eyes in epiphany.

"Oh. Well, um, but if we're going to, anyway--"

"Not here. If I am to vatch and help, then you need get out of bath, or I vill see nothing. Vould not be ... practical," he teased her, laughing when a quirk of her eyebrow put the altruism of his sentiment in question.

He straightened himself again. His gaze fell on the shelf, on the bright purple toy and the paper wrapping that lay wide open, and a suspicion struck him that made him draw his wand and run it lightly over the wet paper. He raised his eyebrows. "Hmm." He _had_ in fact thought that the package had got looser and looser by the minute, before the toy slipped out.

Hermione had been watching curiously, and now she gasped. "Oh. _Oh._ I'm going to kill her. Don't tell me. Unravelling charm?"

"Must haff placed it ven she saw me at your gate. Perhaps Ginny Veasley thought this vas conversation ve needed to haff," said Viktor, bemused. 

Hermione shook her head in disbelief. "She was badgering me about it when we ordered the things; she thought I was a dunderhead for not just talking to you about this stuff. And I suppose she was right, but -- I couldn't for the life of me think of a non-excruciating way to bring it up."

"Not kill her, please." Viktor chuckled. "Vill send her flowers in the morning." He met Hermione's gaze, and ruffled her hair lightly. "Vant me to start dinner? Ve can eat, haff glass of vine, talk. And go to bed vith your new friend on the shelf there, ven relaxed."

"That sounds nice," said Hermione, laughing softly even as she blushed for the twentieth time in the last fifteen minutes. "I must admit it should be more fun this way, than applying myself to practicing with gritted teeth."

"Vill be very much fun, and no need for grit your teeth," promised Viktor with a quiet smile. He left her there, a rosy and wet and rather happy-looking bathtub mermaid -- with nothing more said, just a quick warm glance over his shoulder.

After all, no further reassurance was needed: both of them knew that Viktor was a man of his word.

 

-end-


End file.
